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It’s a tall order to open for the last day of the first Bench Fashion Week. Still, Ziggy Savella pulled it off by making utilitarian clothes exciting again. What separates the pros from the rest is not their one-off amazing creations but their bankability every season.

Entitled Dirty ’30s, Ziggy wanted to create the “anti-thesis of The Great Gatsby.” He shares with Preen, “I wanted clothes that are utilitarian and functional.” From brown shirts with apron-like accents to a crisp white shirt paired with a cropped jacket, Ziggy’s collection can be taken apart and appropriated for any profession and occasion. The looks can also be worn straight from the runway, without much need for edit. For some reason, I found myself excited to go to the office if that meant I got to wear some of the pieces. Pinstriped pants, dark khaki shorts, and shirts rendered in standard hues submitted only to precise tailoring. What gave it a twist were the small details: the fact you could roll up the sleeves on the oversized denim jacket, vertical and horizontal lines meeting each other on a shirt, the drawstring on a pair of pants that could work in the boardroom or in the lounge area.

“[The collection is all about] being wearable, just like the workwear of the 1930’s,” said Ziggy. “I want people to be able to use the clothes easily. It’s not that hard to understand my clothes, which is my design philosophy.”